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What the GNOME Desktop Gets Right and KDE Gets Wrong

Posted by Soulskill on from the gno-place-like-gnome dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Eric Griffith at Phoronix has provided a fresh perspective on the KDE vs. GNOME desktop debate after exclusively using GNOME for the past week while being a longtime KDE user. He concluded his five-page editorial (which raises some valid points throughout) by saying, "Gnome feels like a product. It feels like a singular experience. When you use it, it feels like it is complete and that everything you need is at your fingertips. It feels like the Linux desktop. ... In KDE, it's just some random-looking window popup that any application could have created. ... KDE doesn't feel like cohesive experience. KDE doesn't feel like it has a direction its moving in, it doesn't feel like a full experience. KDE feels like its a bunch of pieces that are moving in a bunch of different directions, that just happen to have a shared toolkit beneath them." However, with the week over and despite his criticism, he's back to using KDE.

24 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Yes I'm old.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know that a "cohesive user experience" is what the masses want, and what Linux really needs to become a truly viable mainstram desktop OS, and that doing so is probably a good thing.

    But from a personal preference standpoint, I much prefer the "bunch of random bits" approach. It annoys me that both gnome and to a lesser extend KDE are heading in the "one big giant thing" direction where everything is interdependent and it's hard to just run the bits and pieces you want.

    I use openbox plus bits of xfce, but I like dolphin as a file browser and gnome-terminal is pretty decent and there's a few other bits and pieces from both that I like. For awhile this was no problem, but now trying to get dolphin to run properly without a full KDE install and a gazillion services running in the background is a huge pain, and I've completely given up on anything gnome (partly due to systemd as I'm trying to hold onto openrc for as long as I can.. but even before that it was pretty coupled to itself).

    And again, I acknowledge that this is probably the directions things should be heading in for the good of humanity and all that, everyone using more open software is a good thing, it's just not the Linux I started with (over a decade ago) and grew to love.

    1. Re:Yes I'm old.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, almost all of the masses want Windows, and a very small portion want OS X.

      They don't want what GNOME offers. They don't want what KDE offers. That's why the following year has been "The Year of Linux on the Desktop" since 1996, for crying out loud!

      The GNOME developers have really fucked things up. They're targeting users who do not exist, and who never will exist. By doing this, they've absolutely ruined the quality of their software, and driven away their most valuable users.

      Just look at what GNOME has done to gedit. It's hard to believe it, but gedit is a text editor! You wouldn't know it based on its now-fucked-up UI, though. It wasn't always like that. Gedit used to have a very good UI, before it was ruined. That's the level of unmitigated stupidity we're talking about from the GNOME project. Yes, they've managed to absolutely fuck up the UI and usability of a goddamn text editor!

      KDE hasn't fucked up as badly as GNOME, but they haven't made any real improvements, either. KDE's performance still isn't great, it's still memory-hungry, and some of the awful GNOME UI trends have made their way into KDE. It's only a 60% disaster, instead of a 130% disaster like GNOME has become.

      Your experience matches what every other intelligent and experienced Linux user has gone through. You've correctly observed that GNOME and KDE are, for lack of a better term, total shit. So you are forced into doing something you shouldn't have to do, which is try to piece together a working desktop environment using pieces from here and there. That's obviously what GNOME and KDE should be doing for you, were they not screwing up so goddamn badly!

    2. Re: Yes I'm old.. by morgauxo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Forget file browsing. Try finding a decent cdburner GUI frontend that doesn't pull in a bucketload of either KDE or GNOME dependencies!

      I was a long-time KDE user and about a year ago decidedent to experiment with banning both Gnome and KDE from being installed and relying on lightweight window managers. It was only mean to be an experiment, I didn't really expect to go more than a week. Today I am using StumpWM combined with the pager (and only the pager) from Lxde. The only thing I really miss is K3b. Seriously, why does a program that is just a front end to cdrecord, which is more than capable of finding my burner rely on some integral part of KDE. If I install it without KDE it tells me I have no burners! Gnomes equivalent program did the same thing.

      I guess I shouldn't complain too loud though. Maybe someday I will take the initiative and write my own burner front-end and not require a bloated desktop to run it. You can write the file manager!

    3. Re: Yes I'm old.. by morgauxo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, for a basic data disc. It's not much harder with good ol' Xcdroast.

      What does Windows explorer do if you drag music files onto it. Do you get an audio CD? (honestly I'm asking cause I don't know) If so, what formats, does it handle ogg?

      Now lets see you drag a bunch of video files into explorer(it's family stuff you recorded with your cellphone right? surely i'm not talking about piracy here) Do you get something that you can pop into your DVD player and have a reasonable expectation that it will actually play?

      Mixed mode discs? Finalized or un-finalized RWs?

      My point is that there is a lot more to a decent burner program than just dragging some files onto a disc.

    4. Re:Yes I'm old.. by bondsbw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just look at what GNOME has done to gedit. It's hard to believe it, but gedit is a text editor! You wouldn't know it based on its now-fucked-up UI, though. It wasn't always like that. Gedit used to have a very good UI, before it was ruined.

      That's not even the latest stable version of gedit.

      The text editing (the point of the application) looks pretty close to identical in old and new. The only big difference is the menu and toolbar area, which reduces--in version 3.16--the size of the area above the text editor by 67% in exchange for putting the lesser used functions behind a menu.

      It might not fit your fancy, and that's perfectly fine. But others prefer that the UI get out of the way instead of always being in your face... evidently they won, this time.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    5. Re:Yes I'm old.. by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The Windows part is irrelevant. It always has been. That's why MS-DOS was king back when EVERYONE ELSE had GUIs.

      WinDOS is all about the ecosystem.

      Windows is just something people tolerate to get to whatever app or game they can't replicate on Linux or MacOS.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    6. Re:Yes I'm old.. by dumfrac · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm too lazy to change, so when Debian Wheezy shipped with GNOME 3 as default, I just used it. Now I am very comfortable with GNOME 3, and my productivity hasn't suffered. Hooray for laziness! (Oh, and I'm old too.)

    7. Re:Yes I'm old.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And ironically, since that's basically what 99% of people use an OS for, Windows is actually a pretty damn good one. At least it doesn't act all self-righteous.

    8. Re:Yes I'm old.. by dumfrac · · Score: 4, Informative

      I applied the same lazy philosophy with NetworkManager. I simply just started using it. Actually, it improved my life on my laptop.

    9. Re:Yes I'm old.. by ckatko · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And what if I'm one of those users who needs that "lesser used" button every day, and multiple times an hour?

      I'm supposed to reduce my productivity because non-power users are afraid of buttons? You say they increased the screen area, but how much of that area actually exists when it's fullscreened on a 1080p screen? 3% improvement? In exchange for even more context-switching and modal dialogs?

    10. Re:Yes I'm old.. by rseuhs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      having to do relearning to do something you did for years - only slower is a massive downgrade.

    11. Re:Yes I'm old.. by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, and that "peer-pressure" comes from the users.

      Generally, people want the latest and greatest. If it takes one more click to access rarely used menu items (who doesn't use keyboard shortcuts?) to have that excitement of an "upgrade," then so be it.

      Yeah, that'll be why Window 8 is so popular.

      Most users don't want to have to relearn how to do stuff just because some hipster decided their way was so much better.

    12. Re:Yes I'm old.. by cvdwl · · Score: 3, Insightful
      YES! Where are my mod points!!!!

      Most users don't want to have to relearn how to do stuff just because some hipster decided their way was so much better.

      It's just text, people. It doesn't need flying toasters or 3 dozen modes.

      --
      ... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
  2. From the description... by VAXcat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    " KDE doesn't feel like it has a direction its moving in, it doesn't feel like a full experience. KDE feels like its a bunch of pieces that are moving in a bunch of different directions, that just happen to have a shared toolkit beneath them"....so, it's just like every other part of UNIX, then....

    --
    There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
  3. There's no debate by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why should there be a debate? If you like one of them, use it. Otherwise, try XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment, Ratpoison or whatever suits you.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. Re:There's no debate by Merk42 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why should there be a debate?

      Because my preferences are fact, and anyone who feels differently is stupid.

  4. Geek war. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can we discuss systemd vs init next?

    1. Re:Geek war. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's time for the ultimate OS showdown: systemd vs Emacs.

  5. Interesting, though I have the opposite experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I found interesting about the quote in the summary is I have the opposite impression of the desktops being discussed. To me, GNOME feels like a collection of thrown-together tools that sort of work together. There does not appear to have any consistency or cooperation between the applications and utilities. KDE, by contrast, seems to work well as a "product" to me. All the components work together, the desktop all ties into the KDE System Settings, widgets "recongize" similar widgets, allowing them to be swapped out for widgets with similar functions.

    On the whole, one of the reasons I tend to prefer KDE over GNOME is the way the pieces of KDE fit together to make a great whole out of the parts. GNOME feels to me to be too bare, to chaotic.

    I'm not saying the author is wrong or that I'm right. I'm just pointing out the observations we've made are subjective feelings, not objective facts that should be used to promote one desktop or the other.

  6. First impressions of X11/Linux count by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Perhaps the debate is which desktop environment to recommend to first-time users of X11/Linux so that they don't get a bad impression and misblame it on Linux.

  7. uuuuuuuuuughh by GoJays · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ugh, who cares?

    It's all a matter of personal preference. That's the beauty of Linux, you can use whatever GUI you want to use. If you don't like it, don't use it and use one of the many other options available. I don't understand this debate. It's even better that at the end of the summary, the guy goes back to KDE even after saying Gnome is better. lol

  8. The author is easily distracted by cecom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I stopped reading when I reached the point of him complaining that the additional buttons in the login and lock screens are "distracting". That must be some kind of a joke - if your computer is locked or you haven't logged on, then you are not currently using it! How can you be complaining of it being distracting? Are you just staring at the lock screen? The problem with all these moronic reviews is that the reviewers don't actually use computers for a purpose other than reviewing. It creates an absurd situation where the reviews are not only useless, but laughable.

    1. Re:The author is easily distracted by xtronics · · Score: 4, Informative

      Totally agree - then I read the whole thing - never mentioned Dophin vs Nautilus. I mean - the most important part of a desktop was never considered?

      BTW Dolphin rocks.

  9. I don't think the masses "want" Windows by walterbyrd · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is just a matter of vendor lock-in, and network effect.

    Office desktops are like office copying machines. Nobody is really passionate about them.

    Windows is just a standard issue office tool. It would be more trouble than it's worth to try to move away from Windows, so we stay with it.